EJI complies with the international standards for Conflict of Interest (COI) disclosure which requires authors to declare all possible conflicts of interest in their manuscripts. COI may possibly include financial, consultant, institutional, or other relationships that could lead to bias or conflicts. If a conflict of interest arises after publication, EJI encourage authors to report it, and the journal will publish a correction disclosing it.
Ethics approval
According to the EJI policy, prospective research involving human participants, human material, or human data, must be reviewed and approved by an appropriate ethics committee which acts in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the dated reference number must be reported in all manuscripts involving such research. Secondary use of stored, clinically characterized, anonymously coded samples for research demands institutional ethical approval. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should be reported in detail in the submitted manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). A manuscript will be rejected if the Editorial Board considers that the research was not carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.
Consent to participate
For all research involving human participants, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. The consent must be obtained for all forms of personally identifiable data including biometric, biomedical, and clinical data. The consent should preferably include a statement to allow the reuse of leftover samples. Documentary evidence of consent must be supplied to EJI editorial board if requested.
Ethical considerations for use of animals in research.
All research studies involving experimental animals should be reviewed and approved by a certified Ethics Committee for Animal Experimentation. The committee must examine the study protocol to guarantee that the experimental design ensures that researchers have reduced the number of experimental animals to the minimum required for reliable data. The committee should also establish that the involved study procedures minimize the harmful effects of the proposed experiments on the animals involved, such as reducing pain, distress and suffering in a manner that leads to a general improvement in animal welfare. Finally, the committee should examine the study protocol carefully to determine that use of experimental animals cannot be avoided.